I step out of the shower and into a cloud of crisp air. The mirror is thick with condensation and I wipe away a layer while pulling a towel around my waist. The bags under my eyes aren’t too bad, considering I slept like a gazelle next to a heard of fucking lions.

I can’t let go of yesterday.

Yes we escaped, somehow, but even sleeping in my own bed didn’t help it to feel real. It still feels like at any moment the sirens will catch up.

When the mirror fogs up again I don’t bother to wipe it away, drifting into my bedroom to grab my phone and call Savannah, the woman that should be my brother’s wife.

She answers with a weary hello.

“Savannah? It’s Noah.”

“Noah,” she exhales. “How are you?”

“I’m fine. How’s Grayson?”

“He’s—he’s sleeping right now.” Her voice is bottled with tension. “The doctors have him on a new round of meds.”

“Why?”

There’s a thick silence before she answers. “We need to talk, Noah. They want to do a catheter procedure on him.”

“What the hell is that?”

She takes in a heavy breath and sighs. “It’s something that they’ll insert in his leg to go in and correct his defects.”

“They work on his heart by putting something in his leg?”

“I don’t know. But it’s their last option before surgery,” she says with an edge that cuts into my chest.

“That sounds like surgery to me.”

“Not open heart surgery! I don’t know if I could put him through that, Noah. It terrifies me.”

“I know, I know,” I soothe. “But we’ll figure it out. We always do. I’ll go in and talk to the doctors with you.”

“Okay.”

“We’ll get him what he needs.”

“And what if that means open heart surgery?” she quivers.

“Then that’s what we’ll get him.”

Savannah sighs and mumbles a soft agreement. There’s the sound of tears in her voice, which is going to make this next part even harder.

“I have another drop off.” I continue when she begins to answer. “Wait, Savannah, listen—it’s not going to be as much as usual. I’m sorry. We—”

“Stop,” she says. “Don’t ever apologize. Not for this.”

I nod to myself. “When can you meet?”

“Tomorrow?”

“By the park?”

There’s a child’s crying in the distance and Savannah answers in a hurry. “Yes, I can do that. I have to go now, Grayson’s awake.”

“Hey—stay strong, all right? We’ll talk soon.”

“All right.”

“About the surgery and everything. Just do whatever the doctors say for now.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” I echo. “And give him a kiss for me.” She agrees and I click off, dragging my fingers through my scalp as I exhale. It’s 5 p.m., thirty minutes till Sophia arrives.

I meander to my closet to find a shirt.

* * *

I admit it; I walked out of my room and immediately began scrambling to do some last minute clean up like someone expecting their damn in-laws. It’s not that my house is dirty, in fact, it’s actually exceptionally clean. But it’s been six months and I’m still working on moving in, and that’s worse than dust and dirt. She doesn’t need to see all the random boxes of stuff that I’ve deemed important enough to move, but not important enough to unpack. Because to hell with unpacking.

I bought this place once I was able to get out of the shoebox sized ‘apartment’ I was renting—not for the privilege of unpacking.

When I answer the door, Sophia’s smiling and staring up at me with a bag in her hand. She’s wearing a tight pair of jeans and a crimson red shirt with shoulder cutouts.

“Welcome,” I say, taking in her soft skin under the evening sun. Her dark brown hair has a single braid tucked to the side. She looks put-together, composed—and absolutely gorgeous.

“Hi,” she chirps, taking a step in and removing her leather sandals.

“Here, let me take that for you.” I lift the bag from her hand. “I’ll bring this into the kitchen.”

“Oh don’t worry, I’ll do it. There’s a few things I need to put in your fridge.”

“If you insist. The kitchen’s just around the corner.” I can feel her on my heels as I lead the way. “It’s all yours,” I say, throwing open the fridge door. “I’m not exactly hurting for space.”

“Oh my gosh.” She clasps her hand over her mouth and giggles. “Looks like a steady diet of eggs, orange juice, and strawberries?”

“There’s a reason I offered to take you to dinner instead of cooking.” I take a step back and watch her stow a container of something on the top shelf and another few somethings on the shelf below.

She stows the final Tupperware, throws the empty bag on the counter and spins around. “Do I have to request a tour?” she asks.

“Well, the tour guide went home an hour ago and unfortunately we have a few sites closed off for construction.” I stand up from where I’d been leaning on the counter. “But I can give it my best shot.”

She humors me with a bob of her eyebrows.

“I see you found your way to the kitchen, that’s good. This is where we usually begin our tours.” I make a dramatic gesture as I walk past the granite island and onto the carpet. “This is the living room.”

“That’s an enormous TV.”

I stop at the foot of the stairs and look back. “Yeah, I guess it is.” It’s never really occurred to me, but she’s right. The TV looks especially massive hanging without anything else on the walls.

“Are we going upstairs?”

“Yes, and there’s a fee for wandering away from the group so please try and keep up.” I shoot her a smirk before turning to climb the stairs. “This is an extra room.” I thumb at the first door on the left.

“Oooh, a guest room,” she lulls. “How fancy.” I’m already moving on when she stops and asks to look inside. I backtrack and push open the door to reveal a room full of all the dozens of boxes I frantically gathered before she arrived.

She looks up at me, feigning an expression of disapproval.

I shrug. “Like I said, construction.”

She laughs as we move down the hall.

“This is also just kind of an extra space.” I point at the next door and intentionally walk on.

“Okay, hold on,” she says. “Pointing at a bunch of closed doors is not a tour. What’s in this one?” Before I can excuse it as just another room full of boxes, she’s twisting the handling and pushing open the door. I follow her in and stop as soon as she does.

We stand there in silence for what feels like several long minutes.

“Wow,” Sophia finally says, though it comes out as more of an exhale than a whisper.

There’s another stretch of silence as her eyes slowly peruse the room before she takes a step toward the closest photograph on the wall.

“These are beautiful,” she says, gently grazing the frame with her finger.

I don’t say a word.

It’s a small room, only about 10 by 15 feet, but she’s inching her way around, her eyes settling on each and every photo on the wall.

“This is like a gallery,” she says, turning as if wanting me to confirm it.

“Yeah, kind of.”

She returns to examining a photo of a slim, iced-over stream in Vermont. “How, I mean—where did you get all of these?” she asks.

I shrug, hoping to avoid a real answer, but her head spins back at me when I remain silent. “I took them,” I say.

“You took these?” The astonishment in her voice causes heat to rush over my skin.

Instead of replying, I nod.

“You’re serious?” she asks. “You actually took these pictures? All of them?”

“All of them.”

“Noah, that’s… amazing. These are amazing,” she exclaims. “They belong in a museum or a gallery or something. Where did you even take all of these?”

“I don’t know. All over the place.” I’ve never answered a single question about one of my pictures. Never even let anyone in this room.

“There’s so many,” she says, moving to the next frame on the wall.

“I used to spend a lot of time roaming and taking pictures before I—” I stop when I catch myself. “—before I moved into this place and starting managing the gallery.”

“So why don’t you sell these in your gallery then?”

I shrug again. “I’ve never really thought about it. It’s not really why I took them.”

“Why did you take them?”

Her question catches me by surprise. “Because I love it,” I say. It’s the first thing that came to me, but it sounded a lot less pathetic in my head. Though she doesn’t seem to mind.

“Noah, you’re—you’re good. Really good. You’re talented. These all look surreal.”

I mutter a soft thank you and she inches to her right. “I really appreciate that,” I add after a beat.

She turns around to shoot me a smile before returning to studying the walls. We spend the next several minuets in silence as she circles the room before halting for one final gaze. I step out into the hall to wait.

“You should charge admission for that room,” she says after eventually joining me. “It can be a little side attraction on the tour.” She smirks.

“Well this tour is about to leave you behind, and no, I will not refund your ticket.”

She laughs and takes a long step around me. “Tour’s leaving, better catch up.”

“I think you’re forgetting who’s the guide and who’s the guest,” I say, following her down the hall and into my bedroom.

“Is this where the guide sleeps?” She looks around as if expecting the walls to be decked with more photos instead of plain white paint.

I nod. “And in the interest of full disclosure, the guide prefers the right side of his bed.”

Sophia looks up at me and her eyes flicker in amusement. “I’ll try to remember that.” She spins around and out the door just as quickly as she entered.

I follow her down the stairs and back into the kitchen. She doesn’t hesitate to assemble a buffet of ingredients across the counter. There’s sliced chicken, cans of soup, bread, onions, celery, asparagus, various seasonings, and even a damn carton of almond milk. And that’s only what I can make out. There’s still a few objects sitting in her bag and several plastic Tupperwares filled with what looks like sauce.

“Jesus,” I say, watching her place the ingredients like it’s one big a puzzle. “Did you bring the whole supermarket with you?”

“Only what I need,” she says through a smile.

“You need all of this?” I scan the counter and pick up a loaf of bread. “You know I keep food in my house, right?”

“Not by the look of your fridge.” She snatches the bread out of my hand. “And a guy’s pantry is about as hit or miss as it gets.” That makes me chuckle out loud. She’s not all that wrong, either. There’s a good chance I’d have the makings to season a decent chicken breast, but not for whatever project she has in mind.

However… there’s a 100 percent chance that I’m stocked with alcohol.

I open the fridge. “Well, can I at least pour you a beer while you work?”

She stops and faces me, her eyes fixed on the two cans in my hand as a look of disgust invades her face.

“What?” I ask, as if her expression isn’t making it obvious enough.

“I’m not really a beer fan,” she says, but I’m already one step ahead. I turn back to the fridge and pull out two bottles of wine.

“White or red?”

She considers it for a moment. “Hmm, I think a white will probably pair better with dinner.”

“You got it.” I stow the bottle of red and retrieve a corkscrew from the drawer to my right. “Do you like Sauvignon Blanc?” I ask as I remove two glasses from the cabinet.

“I do.”

She smiles as I hand her a glass. “Cheers,” I say.

“Cheers!” she echoes, tapping my glass.

After taking a sip, she gets right to work and I make my spot on a barstool behind the island to watch. She heats the oven, rotates plates through microwave, bounces between the fridge and the counter.

Part of me feels weird just sitting here and watching her cook, but she clearly doesn’t mind. And really, I don’t either. I’d rather do this than try and find a distraction, which I doubt she’d prefer anyway. And there’s something incredibly attractive about watching Sophia drift around my kitchen as if she owns the place. Once or twice she’s asked for the location of certain items, but for the most part she moves comfortably between what seems like a million different tasks.

After awhile, I meander over and top off her glass.

“Thank you.” She grins at me as I pour.

“Starting to smell good in here.”

“That’s going to need another few minutes in there.” She gestures at the oven as I return to my stool. “But the sauce is ready, and I’ll pull the asparagus out pretty soon.” She looks at me. “You haven’t even asked what I’m making.”

“That’s because I’m not sure I could even guess.”

Her eyebrows arch into her forehead. “I guess it’ll be a surprise then,” she says, delighted.

That’s fine with me. I’m sure the final product will be delicious, but her company has been the real treat. This is the first time this new sterile house has actually felt like my home. She fills it more than any amount of furnishing could.

That’s what she does. She fills the emptiness.

The guy sitting across from her at Giovanni’s was the most complete version of me that I’ve ever felt. Like every spot that life’s broken me was suddenly mended. Not permanently, but given new electricity.

And watching her leave after dinner had zapped every jolt of that electricity. But it’s come right back. A completeness that I don’t want to let go of.

Sophia spins around, her face beaming. “Dinner’s ready!”